Honour Bound (8 page)

-12-

The
Ford Transit van paused at the junction, its bright paintwork glistening under
the wash of streetlights, the wipers constantly clearing the windscreen of a
persistent drizzle blown by the wind from a leaden sky. The headlights, caked
in grime from the lengthy drive made little impression against the dreary
gloom, casting pitiful ovals of light on the wet road
surface.     

The
driver edged the van out of the junction into a large gap in the early morning
flow of traffic. He looked in his mirror, checking yet again on the tarpaulin
covered trailer that bobbed along behind like a tender in a ship's wake. The
traffic was light, as he knew it would be in this part of the city, the rush
hour another two hours in the making. The only pedestrians he had seen had been
the down and outs making their way from the derelict areas where they slept, to
the tourist areas where they begged.

Kieran
O'Connell had collected the van from a side street in the East End just over an
hour and a half earlier. At first, he had driven east, keeping a close watch in
the rear view mirror for any vehicle staying with him for too long. Even though
the traffic was light, he still made several route reversals and a U-turn in a
dead end street before he decided that no one was following. He drove as far as
the M25 motorway, crossed the bridge over the Thames and headed west, back
towards the rain washed city.

The
van passed beneath a railway bridge carrying the main southeast line into
London Bridge station before stopping at a set of traffic lights. Directly
ahead, the rising piers of Tower Bridge loomed like a massif out of the
clinging river mist. The pulsing anti-collision lights, endlessly blinking at
the summit, were barely visible due to the gathering murk. He waited patiently,
gently tugging at his bottom lip with thumb and forefinger, staring at the red
light as if willing it to change. The lights finally dropped through their
sequence and the van rolled sedately forward, through the yawning stone arch
and on to the centre span of the bridge. Hazard lights flashed as it bounced up
the kerb and onto the footpath.

O'Connell,
a baby faced 44-year-old Irishman with a dislike for most things British, liked
the idea of earning a lot of money for two hours work. The fat man had paid
well for leaving one of the Transits at Heathrow, and the sum was equally
handsome for this little job.

God,
he thought, what I would give for such an organization back home. He knew of
many men over the water who would give their right arm to blow a hole in such a
prominent British landmark. But sadly, it was not to be. Before the movement
was disbanded for political gain, it was infiltrated by so many touts, that any
operation was usually doomed before it got off the ground. The security forces
had ambushed the last two attacks he had taken part in, each time he had barely
escaped with his life. He thought about the volunteers from his unit that had
not been so lucky, shot down like dogs by the bastard SAS. Five good republican
lives wasted so a tout could line his filthy pockets with Brit blood money. The
movements own security section had failed to catch the informers, so they had
covered their own failures by blaming the losses on poor intelligence and
planning. Over the years, the movement had lost direction, but now, long after
the Good Friday agreement, it was rudderless. The old guard had taken the
Queen’s shilling and dressed themselves as politicians and no one else seemed
willing or able to take control. He had begun to wonder what the fat cats were
doing in Dublin, apart from shining their arses. He had wondered just how high
the rot had crawled; it was when the roots of doubt took hold he had decided to
quit. You cannot win when you are fighting your own, better to be a live
freelancer than a dead volunteer.

He
pushed his door open and walked along the side of the van to the trailer,
throwing casual glances at the few cars crossing the bridge, watching for any
police patrols. He caressed the lump in his jacket, formed by a Browning pistol
resting in its shoulder holster and felt the familiar surge of excitement.

“Let
the bastards come,”' he said to
himself
, “I can take '
em
. My actions will be quicker than their reactions.
Besides, I'd like to stiff another
peeler,
it makes me
sleep better knowing there's one bastard less.”

He
laughed aloud as the irony of his situation suddenly struck him. He had been
killing and bombing the security forces across the water and on the mainland
since he was fourteen. Years of loyal devotion to the cause had ended because
of betrayal by one of their own. And now the fat Brit was paying him good money
to do the very things that he had willingly done for free. Fate was a wonderful
thing; it had a bizarre way of making amends.

Still
smiling, he knelt beside the trailer, ran his hands over the nearside tyre, as
though making an examination, then unscrewed the valve allowing the air to rush
out in a dry, stale cloud. He took a further look around, kicked the now flat
tyre for good measure, unhooked the trailer and lowered it to the ground.

Returning
to the van, he eased it off the footpath and drove to the Docklands Light
Railway section of Tower Hill station, parking neatly in a deserted taxi rank.
He
sellotaped
a 'broken down' note on the inside of
the windscreen, turned the hazard lights on and climbed into the back of the
van through the space separating the front seats. Four large identical packing
crates took up the load space. He sat on the nearest one and pulled out two
wires tucked into a hole drilled below the lid. From a bag on the passenger
seat, he took a battery the size of a cigarette packet and connected the wires
to the terminals. A quiet beep sounded from inside the crate confirming the
circuitry linking all of the crates was active, and an electronic timer had
begun its final journey towards oblivion. He pushed the wires and the battery
back into the hole and climbed out of the van. After locking the door, he
walked back the way he had come, turned left into the
Minories
,
made his way to Aldgate tube station, and caught the first eastbound train.

-13-

He
wished the noise would stop. He had been enjoying himself although he could not
quite remember why. It had been something warm and comfortable and the
irritating noise was pulling him away from an already forgotten pleasure.
Sighing deeply, he rolled over.

The
persistent ringing of the telephone continued, dragging Norton from the depths
of sleep. He reached for his watch, its face readable by the dim flood of light
forcing its way through the thick curtains. A quarter to seven, two hours
before he had intended to surface. A muted throb, like the sound of distant
road drills buzzed through his head, a mental reminder of the lengthy spell at
the police station, a long written report and a lack of sleep. He had finally
made it to bed just over three hours before, it felt more like three minutes.

He
picked up the handset and eyed the recorder. "Norton."
His usual response.

"Sam,"
it was Talbot, "sorry for dragging you out. Caruso has struck again. Two
bombs this time. The first one was on Tower
Bridge,
the
other was a car bomb outside Tower Hill station, no word on casualties from
either scene yet."

Norton's
brain mentally kicked into gear, immediately throwing off the last vestiges of
sleep. “Anybody see anything?" He asked.

"We've
got one witness, a woman. She saw a van parked on the path on the centre span
of the bridge just after five this morning. She assumed it was a works van, and
took no further notice. Other than that, nothing, but it’s still early days
yet. Anyone who was in the area may be at work and probably hasn't heard the
news."

He
paused. "I heard about what happened yesterday. I'm sorry about
Willie."

"Thanks.
It was always a possibility something like that would happen. He was well aware
of the risks dealing with that sort of scum."

Talbot
left a respectable silence.

Norton
had thought a lot about Willie over the last few hours, shot down in cold blood
in a rat-infested street, apparently for nothing.

“Could've
been a mugging gone wrong,” one of the young constables had suggested at the
police station.

“Hardly,”
Norton had replied. “Very few people would want to touch him let alone rummage
through his clothing. He was not a very savoury looking character at the best
of times.”    

“Just
a thought,” the young man had said before adjourning into the depths of the
station to write his report.

He’d
been driven from the police station to the mortuary to officially identify the
body, and fill in the blanks on the coroners report sheet. Willie's frail,
emaciated corpse, stripped of clothing and any remaining dignity, was laid on a
plastic tray in a freezer compartment awaiting a post mortem later in the day.
Norton stood by him for a little while, silently, knowing there was no one else
who would care. Although they had never been friends in the true sense of the
word, Norton had come to respect the guts Willie had shown in getting him
information, usually dangerous information, from his many sources on the
streets. He had decided yesterday as he walked, hands
raised
towards the police car, that he would find who was responsible for his death.
The two men who had killed him had carried the hallmarks of professionals,
someone had sent them and someone would be punished. Willie deserved at least
that.

Norton
was roused from his thoughts by the sound of Talbot’s voice.   

"I
put your ideas about the mail vans," he was saying, "to Jamie
Stewart. He's the chief boffin at the Royal Mail security section. I've given
him a very basic outline, mainly because that's all we have, and he's going to
dig through their computer records. You've got an appointment with him later on
this afternoon."

"Fine,
let's hope he can throw some light on things. Is there anything on the two
stiffs yet?"

"No
not yet. Their photos have gone out to each police station and their prints
were processed at the Yard. I've sent copies of everything to Interpol just in
case but we'll have to wait a while for them to get back to us. So far it
appears they were unknowns."   

"They
were using some expensive equipment just to be starting out.” Norton said, “Do
we know who the car belongs to?"

"It
was a hire car, stolen from a forecourt late last night."

"It
looks like they were targeting him, unless he fell over something on the way to
meet me."

"Could
have," Talbot said, "but it's unlikely." He paused. "By the
way, the serial numbers had been removed from both guns. The forensic boys are
looking at them now. They'll be firing a couple of test rounds to try and match
the rifling patterns from bullets taken out of other bodies."

"Somehow
I don't hold out much hope there," Norton said. "I've got to assume
that they were part of the same group that organized the bombings, and I think
they may be just a little too professional to use traceable weapons."

"Christ,"
Talbot said, "I hope you’re wrong. Look, I have to go now. I'm due in a
meeting on the top floor. Call me as soon as you've got something."

Norton
smiled to himself as Talbot broke the connection. He knew how much he disliked
having to brief the Unit's senior managers. He believed that only field
operators and their controllers should have in depth knowledge of ongoing
operations. It was a belief that Norton shared, the fewer people who knew the
details the more secure the operation.

Throwing
back the quilt, he went to the bathroom.

***

After
ten minutes in the shower, half with near scolding water and half with icy
cold, he felt ready to face the coming day. The earlier throbbing in his head
was now just a memory, as though the jets of water had washed the ache away.

After
cleaning the Sig in a small utility room, he went into the kitchen and sat at
the table. The morning sun that had forced its way through a steadily thinning
layer of cloud streamed through the amber tinted window giving everything in
the room a yellowish hue. A large mug of coffee stood cooling on the table,
emitting wispy tendrils of steam like a volcano in its infancy. Lying next to
it was Willie's crumpled cigarette packet, its four occupants evicted and lying
on an old newspaper.

Norton
removed the filter from each of the cigarettes and took a small knife from a
drawer. He picked up the first filter and cut along its length, peeling off the
protective paper and pulling apart the fibrous centre. Finding nothing, he
followed the same procedure with the second filter. He was pulling apart the
third when he found what he was looking for. Using a fingernail and the point
of the knife, he carefully unfolded a small ball of paper. Willie's small but
legible handwriting declared, 'JOEY WILLIAMS HAE1'.

He
studied the note. HAE1 meant Williams' home address was in the E1 postal
district of London, a large area north of the Thames and East of the City, an
area that over many years had become the home from home for many immigrants,
mainly from Bangladesh.

"Well,
Joey Williams," he said to the kitchen wall, "you shouldn't be too
hard to find.”